May 14, 2020
The Honorable Robert Wilkie
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
On behalf of B’nai B’rith International’s more than 100,000 members and supporters in over 40 countries, we write to express our outrage over the display of swastikas, iron crosses, and quotes honoring Adolf Hitler on the gravestones of three German prisoners of war in the Fort Sam Houston and Fort Douglas military cemeteries. These deeply offensive symbols and language appear alongside the tombstones of American soldiers, including some who fought Nazi oppression in World War II.
As America’s oldest and best-known Jewish advocacy and social service organization, we are greatly pained that such sacred ground in Texas and Utah is besmirched by the ghastly emblems of a genocidal regime that sought to destroy the Jewish people. That the gravesites are maintained with taxpayer dollars only adds to the offense.
We are living in an age when anti-Semitism is increasing and knowledge of the Holocaust is diminishing. The fact that swastikas today appear on placards in rallies demonstrates the extent to which the lessons of the Holocaust are being forgotten, as the darkest symbols and motifs of that era become trivialized.
In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to General George C. Marshall following Eisenhower’s visit to a Nazi concentration camp. In it, he wrote, “The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give that first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations as propaganda.” Today those words are emblazoned on the outside of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a testament to the character and foresight of the man who wrote them.
Mr. Secretary, B’nai B’rith calls on the Department of Veterans Affairs to promptly remove the three swastika-bearing gravestones. There cannot be a rationale or justification for allowing these symbols of hatred and genocide to continue to deface U.S. military cemeteries. Seventy-five years after Eisenhower’s letter to Marshall, when first-hand witnesses to the Holocaust are rapidly dwindling in numbers, we cannot risk the minimization of the Holocaust that the unwarranted acceptance of its sinister iconography would encourage.
Respectfully,
Charles O. Kaufman Daniel S. Mariaschin
President Executive Vice President and CEO
The Honorable Robert Wilkie
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
On behalf of B’nai B’rith International’s more than 100,000 members and supporters in over 40 countries, we write to express our outrage over the display of swastikas, iron crosses, and quotes honoring Adolf Hitler on the gravestones of three German prisoners of war in the Fort Sam Houston and Fort Douglas military cemeteries. These deeply offensive symbols and language appear alongside the tombstones of American soldiers, including some who fought Nazi oppression in World War II.
As America’s oldest and best-known Jewish advocacy and social service organization, we are greatly pained that such sacred ground in Texas and Utah is besmirched by the ghastly emblems of a genocidal regime that sought to destroy the Jewish people. That the gravesites are maintained with taxpayer dollars only adds to the offense.
We are living in an age when anti-Semitism is increasing and knowledge of the Holocaust is diminishing. The fact that swastikas today appear on placards in rallies demonstrates the extent to which the lessons of the Holocaust are being forgotten, as the darkest symbols and motifs of that era become trivialized.
In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to General George C. Marshall following Eisenhower’s visit to a Nazi concentration camp. In it, he wrote, “The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give that first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations as propaganda.” Today those words are emblazoned on the outside of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a testament to the character and foresight of the man who wrote them.
Mr. Secretary, B’nai B’rith calls on the Department of Veterans Affairs to promptly remove the three swastika-bearing gravestones. There cannot be a rationale or justification for allowing these symbols of hatred and genocide to continue to deface U.S. military cemeteries. Seventy-five years after Eisenhower’s letter to Marshall, when first-hand witnesses to the Holocaust are rapidly dwindling in numbers, we cannot risk the minimization of the Holocaust that the unwarranted acceptance of its sinister iconography would encourage.
Respectfully,
Charles O. Kaufman Daniel S. Mariaschin
President Executive Vice President and CEO
